The Anatomy Of Cyber Jihad

Over the past few years an abundance of rhetorical bravado has been creatively exhausted by the legislative community and law enforcement to expedite legislation that will protect us from a future cyber event so catastrophic, so devastating, that it could only be described as "THE" Cyber Pearl Harbor. The fact is that, the Cyber Pearl Harbor that many seem to be waiting for has already occurred in the embodiment of the Office of Personnel Management breach. The devastation to our counter intelligence, general population and federal landscape as a whole is so profound that the damage of this breach has yet to be fully calculated. Compounded by the Anthem breach, over 100 million Americans have their most intimate personal details in the hands of a foreign APT, most likely controlled by China, for multi-generational exploitation, blackmail and surveillance. Strangely, an incident that should have had Americans protesting in the streets, was quickly swept under the rug and vanished from conversation. Cyber-Jihadists, a perseverant variant of cyberterrorist, are especially complex adversaries. They do not solely seek to exfiltrate valuable data or information. Cyber-Jihadists are motivated by complex ideologies that oppose the very existence of Western culture. These groups do not obey the unspoken conventions that restrict the activities of criminal and nation state threat actors. Cyber-Jihadists do not fear reprisal and in many cases, their ideology actually encourages collateral damage. These threat actors seek to cause chaos, disrupt operations, and inflict devastating impacts on organizations in every critical sector. Groups such as ISIS already possess the capacity to acquire the means to conduct crippling cyberattacks. In the Energy sector and Financial sector, attacks have already begun. Unless organizations react to preempt the threat, it is only a matter of time before a cataclysmic breach results in a dire impact on the nation.